


Fashioned in Your Image

by alteringegoism



Series: The Young and the Dangerous [2]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Crimes & Criminals, Gen, M/M, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-10
Updated: 2014-09-10
Packaged: 2018-02-16 20:21:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2283312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alteringegoism/pseuds/alteringegoism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because men aren't born, they're made.</p><p>A vignette of when Harry met Niall, and one life wound up exchanged for the other.</p><p>Depending on how squeamish you are, there are some depictions of violence and blood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fashioned in Your Image

The sound of flesh meeting flesh was always so soft, squishy, blood and skin yielding sweet and obedient under cushioned knuckles. Pursuing footsteps, those too were soft. All three pairs of trainers pounding the ground behind him had rubber soles, feet too juvenile yet for the hard heeled boots and brogues that would one day follow. Harry's own shoes squeaked across vinyl flooring. He made a note to try another, quieter pair the following day. Red trailed behind him from his gushing nose. Whooping and hollering hounded him down the school hallway.

The gray sleeves of his jumper staunched the flow. Wool strands stained a rusty red brown that would never rinse clean. Later this would disgust him. For now, more pressing matters demanded his instincts and attention. Harry ducked into an empty classroom and threw his supple, willowy body down behind the teacher's desk. He pressed against the thin veneer of wood and into the dark recess. Pinkened teeth bit down on a wide, fist-swelled lip to hold in the whimpering.

Everything about this man child was soft from his mop of brown curls to his clumsy, puppyish feet. Too soft for the son of the most powerful and hated man in the North West. Under Des Styles' deliberately blind eye, open season had been declared on his only son. This would either toughen him up, forge him a backbone, or kill him trying.

Increasingly, days passed where Harry almost wished that they would.

But the sole remaining reason that they didn't trailed ten steps behind the lynch mob while whistling a jaunty tune. Forbidden by Des from interfering. Waiting to intercede just short of death. Harry had grown to hate Louis as much as he loved his oldest and dearest companion.

Howling and jeering spilled in an eager rush over into the classroom and Harry could not stop the tears that rose in tender green eyes. Cruel hands grabbed at sweat damp hair and claws dug into the spare meat of his arms. They dragged his gangly form out into the open and dropped him to the hard floor. Aching breath wheezed out of flawed lungs. Even before the next round of punches and kicks landed, on his cheek, into his kidneys, so he'd be spitting and pissing blood to remember them by, sour, bitter bile gurgled up in Harry's throat to choke him. Manic blue stared him down from the other side of the room.

The beatdown, the enforcement of hierarchies recommenced. 

"Oi! What are you lot up to there?" a congenial stranger's voice called from the doorway.

A close-shaved head lifted from Harry's fetal-curled body and a twisted face below a low sloping forehead snarled, "Mind yourself, you fuckin' paddy."

The whip thin brunette boy, who Harry could see through swollen lids now that the blows raining down on his skull had paused, stiffened. Nigh translucent skin flushed and eyes the blue of a sun and warmth filled sky narrowed. His strong Irish accent thickened, words rolling quick off of a sharpened tongue. "Rude. But I guess I shouldn't expect much else from some little bollocks Brits." He dropped his faded black book bag onto the floor and strolled further into the room.

The pack of three uncoiled from their bent positions. Louis watched unmoving from his position off to the side, well out of the action.

"Turn around and walk away, wee leprechaun. You don't know what you're getting into. Who his family is. What _he_ is," the spotty lad in the middle said.

"I don't know any of that, no," the boy agreed, polite as you please. "What I do know is that it's four against one." He looked them each in the face and glanced over at Louis, who crossed his arms over his chest and yawned.

Pink lips quirked around endearingly crooked teeth. "Call me an eejit, but I never could stand for such uneven odds." The fair boy with the laughing features rolled up his loose shirtsleeves. He stood his ground.

Hungry for new sport, to spill fresh blood across scorched earth, the jackals advanced as one. They turned their backs on weak, soft Harry.

He would remember later that his stomach ached as he rolled to his overlarge feet, that the stapler from the teacher's desk gleamed coldly metallic and weighed solid in his steady hand. The pulpy crunch it made when it connected to a temple and came down on a forehead and slammed into a jaw would echo in his dreams. Their groans as the two dragged the unconscious one away would play like a lullaby.

At the time, it passed as one quick, red tinged blur. Three gone, three remained. Arousal spiked through Harry so sharply that he went lightheaded.

"Well. Should'a just said so, mate, if you didn't need me help. But good on ya, standing up to them twats." The Irish lad kept a wary eye on Louis, who had yet to shift much more than a few millimetres, behind him. He took small steps forward, the beat of them light but sure.

The red smeared stapler clanged against the floor, fallen from loose fingers.

"I'm Niall. I'm new to these parts if ya couldn't tell." Niall reached out to make his acquaintanceship.

"Don't touch him."

Niall tilted his head at Louis and then carefully, deliberately, shook Harry's hand in a firm grasp. He spoke over his shoulder to the other boy. "Awfully rich of you, mate, after all that. It's not me he needs protecting from."

"No," Louis agreed.

Niall looked between them in silence, his confusion palpable. Then he shrugged, laughed, and pried his fingers from Harry's hold. "Best be going now. See you around, mate. Maybe not you. You scare me." He directed the last to Louis while slipping out the door and proceeding on his way, out of sight.

For the first time in a long while, Harry spoke up. "I want him."

"Harry, are you-" Louis' expression flickered looking out into the hallway before returning to Harry and settling into bored blankness. "Are you sure that's wise?"

It didn't matter. Niall had sealed his own fate and Harry's along with it. After all, a Styles always took care of and never let go of what was his.


End file.
